Iraqis havent right to complain about electricity.

LE

"Just touch a button and you get light!" said Llewellyn, marveling as she sat in her tidy, stone-floored kitchen.

Power in this house has long come from a diesel generator. But because of the high cost of fuel, Llewellyn used it only in the evenings to run her four appliances: a television to watch weather reports, and a vacuum, iron and washing machine to help with the cleaning. She has no refrigerator or freezer and keeps her milk in a larder.

For as long as she can remember, she turned off the generator each evening and found her way to bed with a flashlight.

The change came a week ago Friday, when Llewellyn and Eifion Davies, who lives on a nearby farm in this Welsh valley 180 miles west of London, were finally hooked up to the national electric power grid.

ADC

...and if they do, under their next regime, this is what is likely to happen:

December 12, 2005

Iraq Prison Raid Finds a New Case of Mistreatment
By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Monday, Dec. 12 - American and Iraqi forces raiding an Iraqi government detention center last Thursday in Baghdad discovered more than 600 prisoners packed into a cramped space, 13 of them mistreated so badly they had to be taken to a hospital, a senior American official said early Monday. The raid was the second in the past month in which American forces have uncovered mistreatment of prisoners at the hands of Interior Ministry officials. On Nov. 15, soldiers with the Third Infantry Division, charged with controlling Baghdad, entered a ministry bunker in central Baghdad and found 169 malnourished prisoners, some of them tortured. Most of those prisoners were Sunni Arabs.

The detention center raided Thursday, situated to the east of the Tigris River, is run by a commando unit from the Interior Ministry, which oversees the country's police forces, said the senior American official, Lt. Col. Guy Rudisill, a spokesman for the American detention system in Iraq. When members of the search team entered the building, he said, they found "overcrowded" conditions that prompted them to begin transferring the prisoners.

"Thirteen of them were removed due to medical reasons and sent to a hospital," the colonel said in a telephone interview, declining to specify exactly what signs of abuse or torture, if any, the prisoners might have exhibited. Iraqi officials are still investigating the findings, he added. A total of 625 prisoners had been kept in the center.

Sunni leaders immediately denounced the Shiite-led government after the Nov. 15 discovery, and some have repeatedly raised the issue during campaigning for the parliamentary elections on Thursday.

The Interior Ministry is run by Bayan Jabr, a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a leading religious Shiite party that has an Iranian-trained armed wing called the Badr Organization. Many Iraqi officials have said the ministry has recruited heavily from Badr and other Shiite militias, and there is growing evidence that such forces are abducting, torturing and killing Sunni Arabs.

Colonel Rudisill said he did not know the ethnic or religious make-up of the prisoners found Thursday, or whether the commandos running the center had been recruited from militias. The Interior Ministry employs a vast array of commando units, many shrouded in secrecy.

There was no immediate comment from the Interior Ministry on the Thursday raid, first reported on The Washington Post's Web site late Sunday.

The uncovering of the bunker last month led to an extraordinary public rebuke from the American Embassy, which asked the government to bar militias from dominating the security forces and assigned Justice Department officials to assist in a wider Iraqi-led investigation into detention centers across Iraq. The Bush administration is still grappling with fallout from the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal that galvanized anti-American sentiments across the Muslim world.

The broader investigation begun last month has not been completed, and it was unclear whether the search last Thursday was part of it. Colonel Rudisill said he did not know what prompted the raid. The team was led by the Ministry of Human Rights, he added.

Of the 625 prisoners found, 75 have been transferred to a center called Rusafa Prison, also in Baghdad, and 56 others were released after Iraqi judges determined there was no longer any need to hold them, the colonel said. The rest are still in the prison that was raided, he said, and judges will be reviewing their files.

With just four days to go until the parliamentary elections, the Iraqi electoral commission said Sunday that it had found irregularities in voter registration in the volatile northern city of Kirkuk.

The discovery was the first election irregularity announced by the commission as the country prepares for the vote on Thursday.

The commission said experts conducting an audit of voter lists had found an unexpected surge in voter registration in the area. When the experts scrutinized the registration forms, the commission said in a written statement, they found that many had been filled out incorrectly. Some had missing signatures and others had more than one signature. In some cases, the same name appeared on several forms.

Adel al-Lami, the director general of the electoral commission, said in an interview on Sunday that in his view the voter registration irregularities were technical errors. "Please stay away from political conspiracies," he said. "There's no political reason for this."

Kirkuk is considered one of the most potentially incendiary cities in Iraq, because of both its diverse ethnic and religious mix and its oil. The area has 10 percent to 20 percent of Iraq's oil reserves. As a result, several competing groups - Kurds, Turkmens and Arabs - claim dominance. The commission said that it would distribute to polling places a list of names for whom forms had been rejected, and that those people would not be allowed to vote.

The American military said Sunday that a soldier was killed in a roadside bomb explosion in Baghdad. At least 2,144 American troops have died in the war.

An insurgent group, the Victorious Army Group, has extended a deadline for a Web design contest, according to an Internet posting. The group has set a Jan. 15 deadline for submissions of a design "worthy of the group's reputation and the reputation of the jihad and the mujahedeen," according to a translation provided by the SITE Institute, which monitors jihadist messages.

The winner is promised "God's blessings" and the opportunity to fire three long-range rockets at an American military base.

I'm sure Wales is a wonderful place, where people is open-hearted and nature (at least in some places) hasn't been damaged by civilisation. Yes of course help to Iraqi people is of the highest priority but some (not many of course) are waiting help in the UK.

@TheIronDuke: Russian or any other trolls tend to be dealt with using weapons Russia can never hope to deploy.
Humour Irony Intelligence Knowlege

I'm sure Wales is a wonderful place, where people is open-hearted and nature (at least in some places) hasn't been damaged by civilisation. Yes of course help to Iraqi people is of the highest priority but some (not many of course) are waiting help in the UK.

The difference between these folk (fourth generation Welsh hill farmers) and the Iraqis ( or Chechens,Ingush and Ossetians come to that) is that the Llewellyn family could have had electric light anytime in the last twenty years if they were prepared to pay South Wales Electricity Board for the cost of connection

The piece ( recycled by the US journo in time honoured fashion) is part of the enduring American notion of lil' old Britainshire....a quaint sleepy hollow,casting by Disney, where people call each other 'Old chap', every male over thirty wears a tweed jacket with elbow patches and car-jacking is unheard of......I could probably find a hundred households in Appalachia that don't bother with paying an electric company to connect to the main grid (Come ON Washington Post - that MUST be worth an airticket ! ).....and whilst there is plenty of poverty to be found here in Her Majesty's United Kingdom , Sergey, I have yet to see anyone not engaged in the tourist industry using donkeys as the primary form of transport, as I saw in cosmopolitan 21st century Greece this summer.......and in Iraq in 2003.

Na Zdroviye !

G'Man

“Beyond a certain point, military display is only possible in countries where the common people dare not laugh at the army.”

WANTED: A few men and women of SPIRIT, berths on the good ship Ustafish - https://www.torn.com/2082453

LE

Picking up on Goatman's post (thank you for the PM by the way: I'll be in touch.) about the 'Merican view of Olde Englande: this does have a positive spin to it. I found that beuing in the US and wearing No1 Dress with all the trimmings plus adopting an accent that made Lesley Phillips seem lees than salacious and Noel Coward a bit rough trade I was, for the first and probably only time in my miserable life, having to beat off the females of the species (plus a bloke from California) with a proverbial sh*tty stick.

“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” ( G K Chesterton)
“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” (Voltaire)
“Only the dead have seen the end of war.” (Plato)

LE

The difference between these folk (fourth generation Welsh hill farmers) and the Iraqis ( or Chechens,Ingush and Ossetians come to that) is that the Llewellyn family could have had electric light anytime in the last twenty years if they were prepared to pay South Wales Electricity Board for the cost of connection

As I understand these men and woman are not as rich as mr.Abramovitch and 20000 Pounds is a very big money for them. So it is a bit strange that while British government is helping Iraqi people (including electricity) Britons (only 300km from London) must pay for electrification without any help.

In Soviet times Ossetia, Chechnya, Ingushetia and many other places were supplied by local power-grids and only very remote mountaneos settelments hadn't electicity (it would be too expensive). I have heard that restoration of power-grid in Chechnya is near to end. This task is regarded in Moscow as very important.

Vladimir Putin has awarded Nurdin Usamov the highest federal decoration, a star of Hero of the Russian Federation.
...
Usamov said to the president that 1,300 people are now engaged in the rehabilitation of the Chechen electricity system. Another 400 workers will soon join them.

LE

As I understand these men and woman are not as rich as mr.Abramovitch and 20000 Pounds is a very big money for them. So it is a bit strange that while British government is helping Iraqi people (including electricity) Britons (only 300km from London) must pay for electrification without any help.
Ah, Gospodin, You must realise that it is only recently that we have carried out extensive landscape conversion in Iraq, in full view of the world and now feel a little guilty about it, have a need to demonstrate the benefits of the new democracy that we are imposing and care what the rest of the world thinks about us. On the other hand, its hundreds of years since we rip-roared through Wales, we don't care now and certainly didn't then and.... oh yes, the structure of Britain is such that it's citizens can afford electricity. I say this as a bloke who lives in a village without mains drainage, without street lighting,without many of the so-called trappings of civilisation and without them by choice. Yes, it is in England so that makes up for everything else.

“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” ( G K Chesterton)
“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” (Voltaire)
“Only the dead have seen the end of war.” (Plato)

LE

I say this as a bloke who lives in a village without mains drainage, without street lighting,without many of the so-called trappings of civilisation and without them by choice. Yes, it is in England so that makes up for everything else.

ADC

I say this as a bloke who lives in a village without mains drainage, without street lighting,without many of the so-called trappings of civilisation and without them by choice. Yes, it is in England so that makes up for everything else.

......perplexing people......Sergey, whilst my house is blessed with electricity (until a storm takes down the power line) and mains gas,like Rickshaw I am delighted to live in a village where the street lighting ends 100 feet from my front door and the nearest shop is a mile away, and with cows in earshot.
I walk my dog through woods alive with rabbits,squirrels and deer. My journey to work takes me through twisting lanes full of dead leaves and muddy tractors....and I wouldn't want it any other way!

Just as the Arbat or Lubertskaya isn't Russia, London (with or without red buses) isn't England - and it certainly isn't Britain ( as the BBC's Welsh language channel may have brought home to you - there is also an independent TV company broadcasting in Welsh,S4C)

PS, the St Petersburg ballet company are touring England at the moment - are they worth me getting on my donkey to see ?

LE

Ah...Communism is Soviet power and electrification! So said Vladimir Ilyich Lenin...

More seriously, there are villages in the Yorkshire Dales that only got a mains water supply this year. Personally, if I was starting from scratch I'd get solar panels and a Rutland wind turbine. Who needs a grid?

LE

We might not all have mains electricity but at least we're not lining up around the block to be paid in feckin' potatoes.

"If you ask me, this country could use a little less motivation. The people who are motivated are the ones causing all the trouble. Stock swindlers, serial killers, child molesters, Christian conservatives... these people are highly motivated." -George Carlin

"If some **** can **** something up, that **** will pick the worst possible time to ******* **** it up cause that ****'s a ****." -Malcolm Tucker

LE

An ex-crab friend of mine now farms organically in North Yorkshire. He has a wind turbine, and not only does he have no electricity bills, any surplus power is sold to the National Grid. Apparently the contraption will pay for itself in fairly short order.

I had a similar experience to Rickshaw whilst visiting relatives in the mid-west of Spamland. There's something about being there that makes me determined to be even more English. Dress uncompromisingly Terry-Thomas stylee (pocket handkerchief de-rigeur) and BBC Home Service voice worked a treat with the girlies. I even got offered a job selling Jagwars!

LE

If it is Mariinsky ballet then no doubt, it is worth to see. Mariinsky was Emprror's theatre (before revolution St.Petersburg was Russian capital). It has more that 220 years history.

There is well-known rivalty among Moscow and St.Petersbug ballet schools. Alas I myself haven't see Mariinsky ballet live (only on TV). They are rare guests in Moscow and there is a lot of other ballets are in my city.

@TheIronDuke: Russian or any other trolls tend to be dealt with using weapons Russia can never hope to deploy.
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LE

I say this as a bloke who lives in a village without mains drainage, without street lighting,without many of the so-called trappings of civilisation and without them by choice. Yes, it is in England so that makes up for everything else.

Probably you joke. There is no street lightings but there is internet?
My parents were born in vilagges in West Siberia (Tomsk area). Typical distance between villages in my parents' homeland is 20-30 km. In 60's electrification of rural areas there was mainly completed.

This tiny village in Wales is probably a rare exception. I believe that almost whole UK had been electrified long ago.

Actually, there is no internet either Sergey - I trek about 40 km to work (sometimes if I am lucky I will get a ride part of the way on the villagessole tractor) and once I am there I can access the magic that is the internet. Sorry, that was a feeble attempt at levity. I elected - as Goatman has already explained - to getaway from the urban sprawl. Once I complete my service it is my plan (Mrs Rickshaw notwithstanding) to escape further. The Inner Hebrides or New Zealand are both strong contenders at the mo'.

“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” ( G K Chesterton)
“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” (Voltaire)
“Only the dead have seen the end of war.” (Plato)

It is very hard for me to believe. Maybe by tractor you meant Bently (or at least Landrover)?

...and once I am there I can access the magic that is the internet. Sorry, that was a feeble attempt at levity. I elected - as Goatman has already explained - to getaway from the urban sprawl. Once I complete my service it is my plan (Mrs Rickshaw notwithstanding) to escape further. The Inner Hebrides or New Zealand are both strong contenders at the mo'.

At least at this point I understand you. I have small brick-house 50km from Moscow near New-Jerusalem. I laid 25000 bricks by own hands. Lovely place, forests around, smell of pine-trees, a lot of mushrooms (it is our Russian passion) and ... my late Labrador so loved to swim in crystal-clear waters of local lake. And my father (former KGB colonel) lives in very modest way in country-side 100km from Moscow in wooden house (we built it 25 years ago). He have a flat in Moscow but prefers wild nature.

@TheIronDuke: Russian or any other trolls tend to be dealt with using weapons Russia can never hope to deploy.
Humour Irony Intelligence Knowlege

I am in awe of your linguistic skills: my Russian is monosyllabic eg " Please.Bread.Tea.Thanks" - and your evident skills as a bricky would put you in high demand over here - at least $USD51,000 a year ( more than many academics ). Not sure what KGB/GRU salaries are like these days.....

But considered use of the word 'the' will vastly improve your mastery of our slippery language.

Now, what is a Ushanka please ?

Le Chevre

“Beyond a certain point, military display is only possible in countries where the common people dare not laugh at the army.”

WANTED: A few men and women of SPIRIT, berths on the good ship Ustafish - https://www.torn.com/2082453

I am in awe of your linguistic skills: my Russian is monosyllabic eg " Please.Bread.Tea.Thanks" - and your evident skills as a bricky would put you in high demand over here - at least $USD51,000 a year ( more than many academics ). Not sure what KGB/GRU salaries are like these days.....

But considered use of the word 'the' will vastly improve your mastery of our slippery language.

Great thanks! Alas I know the rules but one thing is to know them and another one is to implement the rules in practice. As Russian language is (thank God) voided articles then each time I make significant efforts to put them on the right place. As I know in newspapers' headlines articles as a rule are being omitted. So I hope that my posts are at least understandable.